Sales to 31 December were up 13% 1.275bn (E2.08bn), with the increase across all divisions, while pre-tax earnings also rose 13% to 54.5m.

A spokeswoman for MAN Roland said: "We are very pleased with the results and we are confident in the future. Orders are slightly down, especially in sheet-fed, due to the economic downturn. But we hope that things will improve in the second half of the year."

MAN Roland said that the web press division had been working to capacity due to a large backlog of orders and that some production capacity had been transferred to it from the sheetfed sector.

The web division has had a successful time in the UK so far this year with Pindar ordering a 48pp Lithoman and Polestar ordering a 64pp Lithoman.

Overall orders taken during last year fell 5% to 1.22bn. Orders for sheetfed presses fell 16% to 422.2m while web orders fell 5% to 534.2m. But orders in the trade and services business sector rose 22% to 264.7m.

MAN Roland said it "might not be able to achieve the good results of 2001", particularly because the operating results of other business sectors would not compensate for the "considerable decrease in production volume experienced by the sheetfed sector".

The firm renegotiated employment agreements within the Offenbach-based sheetfed division. It offered sabbaticals and part-time employment to some staff and transferred 30 workers to the web division in Augsburg.

MAN Rolands head count rose 3% to 10,570 primarily due to the integration of new sales and services companies into the parent group, including Brder Henn Group, which is based in Vienna, and Grafisk of Norway.

Story by John Davies